


Red Magic

by intotheruins



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Magic, Mycroft Holmes Loves Sherlock Holmes, Non-Linear Narrative, Romance, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper Friendship, Sherlock-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 00:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intotheruins/pseuds/intotheruins
Summary: Sherlock has a drawer full of thimbles.





	Red Magic

Sherlock has a drawer full of thimbles.

He doesn't know why, or where they came from. The reason is somewhere in the dusty rubbish bin of his mind palace. Irrelevant. Dull.

He can't throw them away.

For years he's pulled out the little drawer in a little, wooden chest made for toys, or perhaps it was meant as a sewing kit. He stares at the nine silver thimbles, and he never touches them. He closes the chest and tries to delete it.

John found them, once. The chest was left out on the coffee table, just a few weeks after they moved into 221B. Sorting, putting everything in its proper place, it was so boring it made Sherlock want to scream. His books and sock index, that was alright, but the rest... dull. So John put things away. John grumbled and sighed to cover his smiles, his pleasure at having a purpose.

He opened the little drawer, curious. Asked, “What's this, then?”

Sherlock never answered. He took the chest when John gave up, and shoved it under his bed.

It's still there, more than a year later. He tries to delete it. He pretends he doesn't dangle his hand along the floor on the rare times he sleeps in his bed (too big, too wide, too soft), ignores how his fingers trace the drawer.

~

When Sherlock was little, he slept in a hammock.

He crafted it out of sheets, hung it over his bed. His bed wasn't _right._

He'd sleep with his pirate hat, little wooden sword clutched in his fist, and try to cut down Mycroft when he'd sigh, “Sherlock, you're not the pirate.”

Like it was obvious. Like Sherlock didn't know who he was.

(He was five. Of course he didn't know.)

~

Moriarty mocks him softly, sweetly, about hearts and thimbles, and Sherlock's blood turns to ice and his heart races and he doesn't know why.

He tries to restore the memory, but the file is corrupted.

~

Sherlock gives John a thimble.

John takes it, somber, like it's precious. He keeps it in his pocket, and sometimes he slips it onto his pinky finger and smiles.

The thimble is faintly red. Sherlock swears it was silver.

~

He gives Molly a thimble, too.

It's been a week since he started the plan to end Moriarty, a plan he should be excited about—it's the greatest case of his career! He's never been presented with such a grand opportunity to prove how clever he is!

He sits in the lab at Bart's more and more, and watches sweet, clever Molly do her work with far more competence than he ever gives her credit for. He watches, and he chases the plan in circles until his stomach is full of knots and fanged butterflies, and watches some more—a vicious cycle, a desperate attempt to _think._

He shoves out of his chair so violently it clatters to the ground, and presses a thimble he doesn't remember taking into her palm.

“Thank you?” She gives him that hesitant smile, so much sentiment.

A chemical defect found in the losing side. His own words make him want to laugh, now—it's not weakness, it's...

He closes her hand around the thimble and grips her fist in both hands.

“You're so much stronger than I am.”

“Oh.” Molly's eyes fly wide; her free hand comes up to grip his wrist. “Sherlock?”

“You're so much stronger.” Sherlock meets her eyes and thinks, _you're my friend,_ and he hates himself a little for not being able to express the sentiment except with a bit of warm metal, pressed insistently into her skin. “And I need your help.”

~

Sherlock remembers a moment when he was twelve, when Mycroft looked at him as though he'd never seen him before.

There was a well on the property, old stones cracked and filled with moss. Sherlock would sit there sometimes, when his mind was racing too fast and he needed to just breathe. He'd dangle his feet over the edge and run his fingers through the moss, pull in the musty, cool scent of water and wet plant life.

Mycroft appeared on one of these days, seemingly lost in thought, hands clasped behind him. Moving slowly, face tipped into the sun. He spotted Sherlock, frowned. Approached him.

“What is your name?”

Sherlock thought it was a game. Mycroft stopped playing games with him when he was six, and they'd been growing so distant with each other. Hopeful, Sherlock let his mind rev up and spit out a different name for himself.

Mycroft blinked, slowly, so slowly, trance-like—then gave an abrupt sigh. “Really, Sherlock, is that the best name you can come up with? Something so common?”

He walked away, and Sherlock didn't speak to him again for over a year.

~

John's thimble has turned a brilliant, shining shade of red.

Sherlock turns it over and over in his fingers, mad with the need to know how, until John plucks it from his grasp and tucks it back into the pocket where it usually lives.

“How?” Sherlock demands, and John grins and says it's magic.

He pulls the chest out that night, opens the drawer and stares at the remaining seven thimbles. His fingers shake when he plucks one from the center of the pile, and closes his fist around it.

Mycroft looks only slightly surprised when Sherlock storms into his office later and hurls the thimble at him.

“They keep turning red,” Sherlock snaps.

Holding the thimble delicately between thumb and forefinger, Mycroft holds it up to the light. “Mm, so I see.”

He slips the thimble, already flushing a light red, into his pocket alongside his watch.

“What is your name?” Mycroft asks, and Sherlock reels back at the unexpected question.

“What are you on about?” Sherlock demands, but his mind is already slipping back to the well and Mycroft's expression, the mild surprise of seeing a total stranger in a familiar setting.

Mycroft sighs. “You brought such a strange spell with you, Sherlock,” he says, and Sherlock frowns at the word _spell_ , at the sense of wrong as it trips off Mycroft's tongue. “To make sure the family loved you. But even as my mind filled with memories of a little brother I never had, I remembered other things, as well. I remembered you as you wanted me to, and I remembered you as you were.”

“You're not making any sense.” The words are a plea, spoken softly, as Sherlock hasn't spoken to anyone in too long, except maybe John. He means _are we playing a game,_ and Mycroft smiles because he understands.

“You didn't need the spell to make me love you,” Mycroft says, and Sherlock nearly doubles over with the white-hot shock of it piercing his chest—as it is, he still grits his teeth and clenches his fists.

They don't say it, they never _say it_ , what the hell is wrong with—

“Sherlock!”

He shakes himself, snaps his wide eyes to Mycroft's infuriatingly calm gaze.

“Turn the chest over.”

Sherlock runs home. He runs up the stairs, passed a half-asleep John watching crap evening telly, and falls to his knees by his bed.

There is a single name carved into the wood on the bottom of the chest. When half an hour of staring at it won't force it into making sense, Sherlock shoves the chest back under the bed and tosses the name into the darkest room he can find in his Mind Palace.

_~_

“What was the name, then?”

Sherlock blinks. It's been two days since he saw the name on the chest, and ten minutes since he came out of his room and began pacing, plucking harshly at his violin strings and muttering—or, more accurately, rambling out the entire story of the day at the well to John.

“Sorry?” Sherlock stills his fingers, or tries—his index seems intent on running along one string.

“The name you gave Mycroft,” John says. “The one he thought was so common.”

“Oh.” Even as he thinks it, he has to crush it back down along with a rising wave of nausea. “I don't remember.”

John hums, a noncommittal sound that could be acceptance or disbelief and this is why John is fascinating, because sometimes Sherlock just can't read him and it's... thrilling.

“Sherlock?” John murmurs suddenly, and holds up the thimble, perched on his index finger.

It is now the kind of deep red that brings roses to Sherlock's mind, and it's glowing.

“Put it away,” Sherlock whispers. “John. Put it away.”

~

Mere hours before the plan goes into action, John says, “I think the color means I love you,” and Sherlock has to pretend he doesn't hear, has to block out the hurt in John's eyes as he scrambles out of the flat and runs and runs until he finds a place to scream.

~

The moment comes, but Moriarty is even crazier than Sherlock could comprehend, and shoots himself right there one the roof.

Now he has to jump. He has to, or everyone he cares about dies.

Sherlock texts _Lazarus_ to Mycroft and climbs up onto the ledge.

The phone ringing damn near makes him jump before he's meant to. John hasn't arrived yet, which means...

“Mycroft?” This isn't part of the plan.

“Sherlock.” Mycroft's voice is tight. “The Detective Inspector and Mrs. Hudson are safe, but we're not going to make it to John in time. I need you to do something for me.”

“I know. Jump.” A cab is coming up the road; Sherlock keeps his eyes on it, in case it's John. It has to be John.

“No. The snipers have been instructed to eliminate their targets even if you jump.” A sigh. A quick breath, then, “Think happy thoughts.”

“What.” It is John. Sherlock needs to get off the phone. “Mycroft, I have to—“

“Think happy thoughts. Not interesting, not stimulating, Sherlock, happy. Do it. _**Now.**_ ”

It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous but Sherlock does it; John's smile, _I think the color means I love you,_ Mrs. Hudson fussing over him, Lestrade sticking up for him again and again, the joy of running so fast he feels like he's flying, the first notes of a composition, his parents smiling proudly as he completed his first successful experiment as a child, Molly looking at him like he's more than just a mad mind, brandishing a wooden sword at Mycroft and delighting in the moment he would cave and pretend to be...

“ _What is your name?”_

“Peter,” Sherlock breathes.

“Yes!” Mycroft cries. “Now _fly!_ ”

~

Sherlock Holmes stands completely still on the roof of St. Bart's; the sniper takes aim at John Watson.

She's never had a drop of alcohol in her life, never done a single drug, so what happens next makes no sense. The detective leaps, and she prepares to fire after he's struck the ground—which never happens.

He swoops upwards, ridiculous coat flaring out behind him like a cape. He snatches up John Watson and soars back over the roof of St. Bart's, out of sight.

She puts away her gun, and never picks it up again. In a few years, she'll appear in Sherlock's life as a journalist obsessed with the supernatural, but for now she simply slips away, just before Mycroft's men can reach her.

~

Two days later, John yells, “You bloody wanker, you gave me a _kiss,_ ” and Sherlock laughs until John gives him a proper one.

~

“I believe this is yours.”

Molly looks up from her paperwork to see Sherlock holding out an small wooden chest. Frowning, she sets it on the desk and opens it up to see six silver thimbles packed into a little drawer.

“Before,” Sherlock says, closing the drawer and flipping the chest over. “Your name was Wendy, and your belief in magic was so strong that you were able to call me from another world.”

Molly shifts a finger over the name _**Wendy**_ carved into the wood, remembers, _“I'll give you a kiss,”_ and a skinny, strange boy holding out his hand expectantly.

“That's just a story,” she says, even as the warmth of it settles in her chest.

Sherlock grins. The maniacal one, the one she shouldn't like but she does and oh god, now she remembers why. “To die would be a great adventure,” Sherlock says. “And you all went and died without me. So I found one of you, settled in to wait for the rest, but I got lost in my own spell.”

“You were always too cocky,” Molly says, and now she's grinning, too, memories of another life flowing smoothly into her mind—Sherlock's magic? She doesn't know, but the very thought makes her giggle. “So I'm Wendy, and John is... well, John. That must mean Mycroft is Michael.”

Sherlock nods.

“And the others?”

He smiles. Starts to back out of the room.

Laughing and shaking her head, Molly takes one of the thimbles and tosses it across the room to him.

“I love you, too,” she says as he slips away.

When she looks down, every single one of the thimbles has turned a vibrant red.

~

Sherlock teaches John how to fly. They'll sit on the roof of St. Bart's, in the spot where Sherlock nearly faked his own death, fly up there at some ridiculous hour of that space between night and dawn and just be together, in the quiet before London wakes.

John will tell Sherlock he loves him, easily, lets the words just roll off his tongue and the sentiment spill warmly from his eyes.

It takes him a while, but eventually Sherlock puts aside thimbles and notions of weakness, and learns how to be strong enough to say the words back to John.

~

END

 


End file.
